Medications for those with Tourettes

Various off-label drugs are prescribed by medical professionals for Tourette, but of these, only two – Pimozide and Haloperidol – are approved by the FDA for the treatment of Tourette. According to TSA, these medications often provide only mild to moderate benefit and have poorly tolerated side effects that limit their use.

The first Neurologist we went to see prescribed Clonidine. We went and got the prescription, but when I got home I saw this was a medication for high blood pressure. Of course, I called the pharmacy to say there was a mistake, but they confirmed that that was the medication that was prescribed and that it was sometimes used for tic disorders. This was an off-label drug.

I was in total shock, how can a high blood pressure medication be given to my 7 year old son? I felt terrible giving this to him but I had no choice. My son was having 30 tics a minute and could not stand it any more. We could not stand seeing him suffer like this anymore either. So we gave him the medication and saw his tics get better within 24 hours. It was such a releif. Unfortunately he started yelling and screaming throughout the following week more and more. He was repeating the word “maybe” constantly. He started each sentence with the word “maybe”, stuck it in the middle and ended the sentence with it as well. We could not understand what he wanted to say.

Clearly this drug was not going to help sufficiently.

Advertisement